MONTREAL – UFC president Dana White can often be just as telling in what he doesn’t say as he is as blunt with what he does.

Such is the case when the UFC and WEC head is asked about the final numbers for the WEC’s first pay-per-view event, “Aldo vs. Faber.”

As a privately held company, Zuffa, LLC, the parent company of both the UFC and WEC, isn’t required to divulge its financial information, but the bright smile of White leads you to believe the numbers must have been positive.

“WEC 48: Aldo vs. Faber,” known simply as “Aldo vs. Faber” during the April broadcast due to the promotion’s multi-channel approach to promoting and broadcasting the event, was harshly criticized from the moment it was announced. Fans complained that $44.99 – the same price as a UFC pay-per-view – was simply too much to pay for a product that consumers were accustomed to receiving for “free” on basic-cable channel Versus.

But a star-studded lineup, which was coupled with a Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar-esque lead-in fight on Spike TV between Leonard Garcia and Chan Sung Jung, led many people to take the leap of faith and fork over their hard-earned cash for the show.

Few – if any– expressed disappointment afterward.

While the UFC routinely scores pay-per-view buyrates of 500,000 or more, other mixed-martial-arts events have struggled to even reach the six-figure plateau. “Affliction: Banned,” a January 2008 event that featured Fedor Emelianenko vs. Andrei Arlovski, Josh Barnett vs. Gilbert Yvel and Vitor Belfort vs. Matt Lindland, among others, has long been considered the silver standard as MMA’s second-bestselling brand of all time.

White, while refusing to divulge specifics, said that’s no longer the case.

“It was a good show,” White said, smile still in place. “We’re happy with the results. We beat many of the expectations.

“A lot of guys in the office were real negative about it. I wasn’t. I came up with the gameplan of how to sell this thing and how to do it. A lot of our partners worked well with us, meaning Versus and Spike TV and MTV. Everybody that we deal with were real good partners, and the thing worked. It was a success.”

White credits the work of his staff, along with that of the company’s partners, for the success of the event, and he stands firm in his belief that PPV events deliver the most bang for the consumer’s buck available in the entertainment landscape.

“My philosophy on pay-per-view is, pay-per-view is still a real cheap form of entertainment,” White said. “In these hard economic times, it’s a cheap form of entertainment. Our pay-per-view is only $45. I think for the fights that we deliver, it’s a great value.”

WEC general manager Reed Harris, who stepped aside as the face of the WEC during the promotion of the event, recently told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that the WEC may hold as many as three pay-per-view events per year if the fights scheduled command that type of broadcast platform. But for those critical of the missing WEC logo and the presence of White and the rest of the UFC broadcast team for the WEC pay-per-view, the UFC boss says get used to it.

“We’re the pay-per-view team,” White said. “It will look the same way.”

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